


evermore

by isola13



Category: The Poppy War - R. F. Kuang
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Post-Canon, Spoilers for Book 3: The Burning God
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28354788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isola13/pseuds/isola13
Summary: Nezha lives on. Rin's ghost haunts him.
Relationships: Fang Runin/Yin Nezha
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	evermore

**Author's Note:**

> post the burning god, inspired by taylor swift's song evermore. (title obviously also from the song) I recommend listening to the song and then reading it slowly because that's how I wrote it. writing sad shit is my coping mechanism for that ending.

He sees her.

Strangely, he isn’t surprised.

“Having fun?”

“Fun is the furthest thing from what I’m doing,” he exhales, and turns. 

Six months.

Six months since Speer, and he’s more surprised it took this long for her ghost to haunt him.

She flickers. His mind isn’t strong enough.

Six most exhausting months of his life that he desperately wanted to join her and Kitay and Venka, yet the only creature who could bless him of death was gone.

“I thought you wanted to lead the nation.”

No, that was the least thing he wanted and he figures she half-knows it by now.

She’s just avoiding the conversation they  _ should  _ have. Which is everything. Everything left unsaid, everything that was, every moment between them since he pushed the blade on her back.

Even before that.

He’s too exhausted to confront her.

“Where’s Kitay?”

Rin turns her face away. “He isn’t the ghost of you.”

The unspoken words lie hung in the air.  _ I am. _

* * *

_ I replay my footsteps on each stepping stone _

_ Trying to find the one where I went wrong _

It’s several weeks later when he finally musters the courage.

“Should I have stopped you?” Nezha asks wearily.

_ I rewind the tape but all it does is pause on the very moment all was lost _

He can’t remember what went through his mind. One moment, she was wrapping his fingers around the blade, the next she lay limp in his arms. So clearly the same as his worst nightmares, he is certain he dreamed it again.

A blade. Her blood. His hand.

Rin gives him a look. It’s a question long overdue.

“No.”

“Let me rephrase that. Could I have stopped you?”

Rin’s silent for a moment. Then,

“I don’t know.”

* * *

_ And I was catching my breath _

_ Barefoot in the wildest winter catching my death _

Days passes.

“You’re going to freeze yourself to death.”

“I can’t die.”

Numbing is the closest thing to peace he can get. Cold is the easiest way to numb.

“Whatever, asshole.”

Nezha closes his eyes.

Maybe if he sits here and lets the cold claim him, he won’t be able to die but he certainly won’t be able to live. Winter winds wrap him around in beautiful comfort, chasing the shadows and dark thoughts away.

No, they don’t chase them away. They linger. They always do. But the cold freezes them, stops them from infiltrating his mind.

Arlong is less colder than the biting frost of Sinegard, but cold enough. He feels himself shiver, once, as the cold sweeps through the tops of the Red Cliffs, through his exposed skin. Down to every nerve of his fingertips till the cold is the only thing he can think about.

Red Cliffs is the only place he can escape from everyone. 

Well, almost everyone. 

“You have a country to lead. I left it to you, remember?”

He blinks.

Her words left a kindling of spirit like the flicker of flames she used to summon; it pierces through the wind, stronger than the cold, and the moment of peace is gone.

Fuck. 

He whirls, sudden anger coursing through him, to confront her, to shout at her, she has no right,  _ no right _ to steal this moment away from him when it was her who put him in this position. When it was more her hand than his that drove the blade through her heart. 

Killing not just her, but his own chance at death.

But his screams die at his throat.

She’s gone, as she always did when he needed her.

He doesn’t need Rin’s ghost to voice out the thought.

“And whose fault is that?”

* * *

_ Can’t remember what I used to fight for _

The past blurs.

“Get a grip.”

“Fuck off.”

“You stabbed me in the back for this fucking democracy, now make it worth it.”

Rin’s jabs don’t go under his skin the way they used to anymore. Her voice is his thoughts, and he accepts that he always knew this.

But if he did it for this fucking democracy, then why is this fucking democracy draining every part of him?

When given the choice, he would simply have all of them back, over this fucking democracy?

“Remember what I told you,” she whispers.

How can he forget?

Her ghost, present or not, is the only thing that makes him move forward.

_ Fix this. _

He can’t remember anything else.

* * *

_ And when I was shipwrecked, I thought of you _

_ In the cracks of light, I dreamed of you _

The worst moment isn’t when he can’t hold back the memory of Speer.

No, the worst is when in moments of vulnerability, he reaches into the past and pulls back glittering pieces of memories only to find them stained and crushed.

Venka, one moment memorizing the history of Nikan with him for Keju, the next screaming at him why he left her behind. Why he never bothered to try.

Kitay, beating him at chess and laughing at him only for the smile to turn into a snarl. His look of disgust is so glaringly bright, so similar to the one he gave at his prison in Arabak that Nezha has to look away.

Rin, sparring with him, a confident grin etched upon her face before his sword turns against her. He never pulls back and she never resists, only a look of confused shock which is somehow worse than blatant hatred.

He wrenches his head out of the memories. But there’s no use to waking up from a nightmare when his nightmare is real.

“And whose fault is that?”

Nezha turns, but she’s gone. 

* * *

_ It was real enough to get me through _

“I’m not real.”

“Amazingly, I figured it out.”

Rin scowls. “Sometimes, I don’t think you did.”

But the thing is, he is terribly lonely.

Nezha knows that no one can ever know him as well as she ever did, and even then she never did. And even now, she’s merely a shadow of his memory.

She’s not real.

But she’s the only one left.

Right now, she’s the most real thing around him.

* * *

_ I swear you were there _

“Rin?” he whispers.

A flicker. A pause. A breath. A flame.

Silence.

He is terribly lonely, and his only other company is tainted memories.

“And whose fault is that?” 

* * *

_ And I couldn’t be sure I had a feeling so peculiar that this pain would be for evermore _

And Nezha knows, as clearly as though it is a foregone conclusion he’d only just been too slow to acknowledge, that he’d never escape her.

Perhaps it’s a blessing. Perhaps it’s a curse.

Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading, hope you liked it, comments are appreciated


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